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An elegy for the lost souls in the dying plains of Kansas, 1936, who clung to their blighted homesteads like bees to a poisoned hive. If a poem is a form of dense evocational shorthand, Sally Nemeth’s HOLY DAYS is a stage poem. It is uncommonly affecting - an elegy for the lost souls in the dying plains of Kansas, 1936, who clung to their blighted homesteads like bees to the poisoned hive. Not as a matter of choice, but of inevitability. This is The Grapes of Wrath in reverse. There is not much plot. What there is, is simple and stirring … It is not the action that counts, but the chiseled characters. Nemeth is a miniaturist. Is there a play in this? There is. Amazingly. A majestic and gripping one. There is beauty and wisdom in this little piece. -Sylvie Drake, Los Angeles Times Set in Kansas during the Dust Bowl, this play tells the story of two farmer brothers and their wives struggling to make it through the drought and winds that hit the southern Great Plains during the 30’s, blowing away as much withered hope as dried-out topsoil … But the play is less about plot than quiet emotion and reflection … the deep hope Dust Bowlers had to draw upon to carry on. -Monica Eng, Chicago Tribune The power of this play derives partly from its unerring choice and arrangement of events. It begins, in the aftermath of devastation, focusing exclusively on how the characters cope with disaster, and presenting them in an initial state of shock, so that bits of basic exposition gradually come to light during the action, as they regain strength to face the facts. The whole gesture of the piece is to show the shattered group pulling themselves together and making survival plans; and, crucially, holding on to the ceremonies of everyday life. -Irving Wardle, The Times (London)
